Last Saturday saw the opening of the Olsen Irwin Australian & International Contemporary Photography exhibition. The exhibition opened to great success? as the hordes of art lovers decedent on to 63 Queen Street to inspect what is new and acclaimed in contemporary photography. The Exhibition surveys photographic works from 27 artists across four continents. Photography is relatively new compared to traditional artistic mediums and can be often a little miss understood. This blog post aims to take readers on a virtual tours of the show and explain a little bit more about the artists and their processes. Anna-Mar?ke ?
| Untitled One??? 2015 Anna-Mar?ke Unique, hand-printed Type C photograph 160 x 110cm |
All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person?s (or thing?s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time?s relentless melt ? Susan Sontag Juli Balla 
Untitled 11??? 2015 Juli Balla pigment print on rag art paper 86.6 x 133.3cm
One of Australia?s premier commercial photographers, Juli Balla?s personal work draws on her upbringing between Europe and Australia. Highly theatrical, staged scenarios intrigue and invite; proposing a series of unanswered questions. Tanatos Banionis 
| Divine Wind??? 2009 Tanatos Banionis unique, type C photograph on Fuji flex 88.5 x 119cm |
Since their Art Moscow debut in 2008, when the video installation Pieta commanded global attention as one of the most-watched videos in contemporary Russian art, Tanatos Banionis have assumed a primary position on the international art world radar. The artists, who wish to remain anonymous, are recognisable via their trademark high-budget, high-resolution mis-en-sc?nes, which blur the borders of state sovereignty and national identity. Mary Ann Brophy 
| La Tour en Dentelle I??? 2015 Mary Anne Brophy photogrpah 80 x 60cm |
The series L?Esprit Rive Gauche presents the culmination of Mary Ann Brophy?s experimentation with ???in-camera photographic manipulation, in an impressionistic rendering of the ineffable beauty of Parisian winter. George Byrne 
| Fitzroy Pool #1??? 2015 George Byrne Archival pigment print 157.5 x 127cm |
Fitzroy Pool #1 is part of a recent series by Australian-born, Los-Angeles based photographer George Byrne, titled Local Division. As a distinctive Australian and American icon, the suburban, public or backyard pool in this instance takes on multiple meanings; throwing line, colour and the aura of absence into the foreground. Bartolomeo Celestino 
| Untitled??? 2015 Bartolomeo Celestino large format type C print 127 x 101.6cm |
Bartolomeo Celestino extrapolates the potential of the photograph as an extension of abstract expressionist aesthetics. The series Natural Order depicts a play on work and world, as paper forms are carefully lit and constructed to mirror the illusion of an uninterrupted horizon. Anthropocene poses a similar preoccupation with the object as subject. Both series are rendered in the distinctive hyper-detail of large format analogue photography. Michael Corridore 
| Untilted??? 2015 Michael Corridore Archival pigment print 75 x 93.6cm |
Michael Corridore photographs paired-back set-ups of various selections from ?waste archives?. End/ User represents an attempt to live with the consequences of consumption, by re-appropriating detritus as an aesthetic entity. ?Tamara Dean 
| The Creek??? 2013 Tamara Dean Archival Pigment Print on Photorag 75 x 100cm |
Tamara Dean?s works explore the relationship between humans and the natural world, and the role of ritual in our lives. One of Australia?s most recognised fine art photographers, Dean seamlessly transitions between documentary and imaginary modes to construct highly seductive and emotionally loaded tableaus. ?Dee and Ricky 
| I LOVE U - Eat Your Heart Out??? 2013 Dee & Ricky high resolution print 83 x 71cm |
Dee and Ricky are United-States-based fashion and accessory designers best known for their collaborations with Converse and Mark Jacobs. Jordan Doner 
| LV Au Study I??? 2014 Jordan Doner digital C-print 101.6 x 152.4cm |
Jordan Doner is a New-York-City-based photomedia artist who crosses boundaries between fine art, fashion, advertising, design and photographic portraiture. Study LV, Au depicts an explosive interruption to the equally vicious cycle of contemporary consumer capitalism. Paul Ferman 
The Immolation of the Followers of St Motoring??? 2008 Paul Ferman Lamda print behind perspex 180 x 90cm
Paul Ferman dissects specific strains of classical philosophy and literature, as made manifest in the artist?s private and everyday life. The Emolation of the Followers of St Motorino represents the artist?s personal meditation on a perceived incongruity between religious conviction and shades of epistemological truth. Tim Georgeson 
Oracle II??? 2015 Tim Georgeson photograph 127 x 177cm
In Oracles I and II, emerging and receding fields of vision compete for primacy. Subaltern domains are pitted against creatures of the sky, offering clues to an undeclared narrative. Far below sea-line, or at altitude, the nebulous may be ever more illuminating than clarity. Eryca Green 
| Last Season??? 2014 Eryca Green Inkjet on photorag 66.6 x 100cm |
Eryca Green?s portraits explore the artist?s emotional landscape, focusing on identity formation and female sexuality. Last Season references Green?s experience of menopause, taking an oppositional perspective to the conventional depiction (or absence of depiction) of this stage-of-life cycle in art history. Jill Greenberg 
| Monkey Suit??? 2005 Jill Greenberg Type C photograph 106.6 x 127 |
Greenberg is prominent internationally for her anthropomorphic animal portraits, which can be read equally as a comment on digital imaging and photographic compositing within an escalating context of photopromiscuity and advertising aesthetics. Her animal subjects forgoe any kind of representative ?truth value? to stand-in for a purely photographic relationship ? the dialectic of subject, object, and ultimately, consumer. Gary Heery 
| Unearthed series #1??? 2014 Gary Heery Photograph 125 x 92cm |
The production of Sydney-based photographer Gary Heery?s series Unearthed required an intensive period of collaboration with a tree transplant specialist. Monthly visits to Peats Ridge on the Central Coast of New South Wales resulted in the intricate and ?earth-ereal? beauty of Unearthed Series #1. Macleay Heriot 
| PELVIS 13, Slippery and Uncatchable??? 2015 Maclay Heriot Hand developed silver gelatin photograph 60 x 91cm |
Coital embellishers, tailors of state, gland enhancers, dance party Linux; a black economy dance-party enterprise, slippery and uncatchable; an explosion of love and hate brooding from a generation of youths screaming to be heard. ?Leila Jeffreys 
| 'Ash'??? 2014 Leila Jeffreys photograph 112 x 89cm |
Leila Jeffreys grew up surrounded by wildlife and forest, sparking her interest in the natural world. The artist began documenting birds by way of photographic portraiture as a personal project in 2008. Jon Lewis 
| Adagio dancers??? 1984 Jon Lewis pigment print on photograph 70 x 87cm |
Jon Lewis? ?Bondi? works were imaged throughout the summer season of 1984 and 1985, continuing sporadically until 1989. Max Dupain described the process in the Sydney Morning Herald that year, ?He just gets out there and makes lucid photography according to the promptings of his inner self. Good luck to him? (June 25th 1985). Charles McKean 
| Manholes??? 2014 Charles McKean Print mounted to foamcore 119 x 260cm |
Sometimes joyous, sometimes playful, and often decorative, manhole covers hide unseen, dark worlds. Our underbelly is readily accessible, yet discreetly hidden from us. Greg Nagel 
| Love Hurts??? 2011 Greg Nagel Archival pigment print on photorag 140 x 140cm |
Working within Tahiti and French Polynesia, Greg Nagel probes subjects of sexuality, adventure and travel journalism, taking inspiration from James Michener, Peter Beard, Gauguin, Irving Penn and Henry David Thoreau. Love Hurts poses a direct metaphor about the precariousness of lust and love within the context of an increasingly transient global community. Francis Packer ?
| Ladies who lunch no.4??? 2015 Francis Packer Unique, gicle print on photorag 40 x 151cm |
In the series Ladies Who Lunch and I Feel Loved, photographic panoramas shed light on the darker undercurrents of Los Angeles high society, albeit through an analogy of gardening. Wild and domesticated plant life teems toward the outer periphery of the frame in a barely constrained symphony of competition. Francis Packer?s love of nature grounds his photographic practice very much in the real, whilst offering a window into the fantastic and supernatural. Martyn Thompson 
In Memoriam #7??? 2015 Martyn Thompson Matte Pigment Print 38.1 x 50.8cm
Martyn Thompson was born in England, raised in Sydney, and resides in New York. He specialises in still life, interior, beauty, accessory, fashion, and travel photography. In Memoriam #7?continues the artist?s exploration of tactile realism in the vanitas and still life tradition, where visual balance is derived from an apparently random composition. 
| Montauk 2 (Surfers' Beach) ??? 2009 Spencer Tunick Type C photograph 78 x 98cm |
Spencer Tunick stages scenes in which the battle of nature and culture plays out in the form of the human nude. His work questions social, political and legal conventions and frameworks governing art in the public sphere. Tunik has courted controversy throughout his artistic career, having been arrested five times whilst attempting to create work outdoors in New York City. The artist now makes work exclusively abroad. Elizabeth Waterman 
| Drag Queens, New York City??? 2014 Elizabeth Waterman Gelatin silver RC print 50.8 x 41cm |
Fashion and advertising photography provides the aesthetic foundation for Elizabeth Waterman?s fine art photography. Based in Brooklyn, Waterman portrays the intoxicating gestalt of a distinctly ?now? generation of creative youth in New York City, as well as subcultural domains. Natalie White 
| The Dealer??? 2013 Natalie White Unique giant Polaroid 95 x 75cms |
Natalie White breaks down the classical distinction of artist and subject in multiple (and often conflicting) manifestations of the modern muse, coming to prominence in light of her work as model to Peter Beard. Though relationship between the two is well documented, White continues to probe the boundaries of auteurship as a model, muse, and artist in her own right; aggressively assuming a neo-feminist agenda through her self-depiction of the photographic nude. Michael Wolf 
| Tokyo Compression #84??? 2010 Michael Wolf archival pigment print, framed UV plexi 40 x 50cms |
Wolf?s ouvre takes on the subject of the individual within society, centering on the unique intensity of the everyday. The series Tokyo Compression posits a close-up, almost interrogatory intimacy with the anonymous individual, set against a myriad of cultural, political, economic and social forces playing out in the modern-day urban subway system. Imagery comes to rest in an ambiguous zone somewhere between documentary and fiction, evoking the war on terror via a carefully constructed aesthetic claustrophobia. Olivier Zahm 
| Natalie White in Artist Studio??? 2012 Olivier Zahm Unique pigment print on archival paper 41.5 x 38cms |
Olivier Zahm is a prolific Paris-born, New-York-based producer, publisher, editor, arts journalist, and photographer. In the Cartier-Bresson documentary tradition, his typically black-and-white images feature candid moments with icons and their entourages. ?
